Principle Investigator

Dr. Chetan Singh Thakur received his PhD in neuromorphic engineering under the supervision of Prof. André van Schaik at the MARCS Research Institute (Brain, Behaviour and Development), Western Sydney University in 2016. He then worked briefly as a research fellow for Defence Science and Technology, Australia. He completed his MTech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2007. Dr. Thakur worked as a research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University with Prof Ralph Etienne-Cummings and Prof Ernst Niebur for a year before joining IISc as an Assistant Professor. In addition, Dr. Thakur has extensive industrial experience. He worked for 6 years with Texas Instruments Singapore as a senior Integrated Circuit Design Engineer, designing IPs for mobile processors. He has been trained by world leaders in the field of neuromorphic engineering, and his research expertise lies in neuromorphic computing, mixed signal VLSI systems, computational neuroscience, probabilistic signal processing, and machine learning. His research interest is to understand the signal processing aspects of the brain and apply those to build novel intelligent systems.

PhD students

Kundan Kumar is a Ph.D. student in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. He received his M.E in Microelectronics from BITS Pilani University (Goa Campus) in 2016. Then he worked for a year at Thomson Reuters IP & Science division, Mumbai, which later became an independent company Clarivate Analytics. He is experienced in Prior Art Searches, Patent landscaping and analytics and has worked on various landscape projects in the domain of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, IOT and Automation. His research areas include Neuromorphic Computing, Analog IC Designs, Machine Learning and Game theory. He is also an avid traveler and a MOOC Enthusiast.

Rownick Pyne is a Ph.D. student in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. He has received his B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University in 2013. Prior to joining the Ph.D. program, he had worked as a Research Associate at IIT Delhi, working in the area of wideband matching network design and energy harvesting from ambient sources for wireless sensor nodes. He was also a Junior Research Fellow at IIT Kharagpur, working in the area of Compressed Sensing based fetal ECG monitoring for point-of-care applications. His research interests include Signal Processing, Machine Learning, Neuromorphic circuits and systems and Brain computer interfacing. He is currently working in the area of neuroelectronic hybrid systems.

Prince Philip is PhD student in the Neuronics Lab. Prior to joining Neuronics Lab, he worked in the areas of analog/ digital integrated circuits in academia and industry.He taught UG level courses such as microelectronic circuits, analog and mixed signal IC design, control engineering and electrical circuits. In industry, he worked on research projects under Dr. PG Poonacha. He designed and developed OFDM based Transceiver Chip under his guidance and several other circuits for wireless and biomedical applications. In addition, he worked as a consultant for a US based semiconductor company. He graduated in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University. His interests are in neuromorphic engineering, theoretical neuroscience, analog IC design and signal processing

Abhishek Nair has Semiconductor industry experience of 5+ years in Intel and Qualcomm as hardware engineer, where he worked on implementation and validation of GPU and DSP architecture. He has done his masters in Embedded Systems from Manipal University. He has industry experience in computer architecture designs, validation and verification with expertise in GPU and DSP. He has hands on experience in C++, python along with kernel drivers. His research interests include new architecture designs with a view of performance and functional enhancement of Neuromorphic computing. High level synthesis and hardware implementation of novel architectures which includes Neural Networks and Deep learning.

Master Students

Ankit Tripathi is currently pursuing M.Tech by research since 2016.He completed his B.E. in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from University Institute of Technology – RGPV in 2015.His work under Dr. Chetan Singh Thakur focuses on understanding and realizing analog based hardware implementation of Neuromorphic systems for pattern recognition and similar tasks.His research interests include Machine Learning & Analog IC design.

Sarthak Gupta is currently pursuing Master of Technology at IISc, Bangalore in Electronic Systems Engineering. He has completed his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2014. He has worked in Texas Instruments, Bangalore as Design Engineer for 18 months. His research interest include hardware implementation of machine learning algorithms. He is currently working on the analog implementation of recurrent neural networks with on-chip online and local learning. And also focusing on developing new learning techniques which can be more hardware friendly.

Dheeraj Bhaskar is an M-tech student of IISC Bangalore, specialised in Electronic Systems Engineeing. He completed his B-tech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from College of Engineering Trivandrum, Kerala. His area of interests include analog and digital circuits. Currently he is working on the project ‘Computer vision tasks using Neuromorphic camera’ under Dr.Chetan Singh Thakur. He also plays cricket as a hobby

Prakhar Jain is Currently pursuing Master’s in Microelectronic Systems (ECE) at IISc. He has Completed his B.Tech from Central University Bilaspur (ITGGU) in 2017. Now he is working on a project in Neuronics Lab on Bayesian inference using Analog Circuits. His research interests include Analog and digital designs, Mixed mode design, Neuromorphic circuit design

Vishal Shaw is currently pursuing Masters of Technology in Microelectronic Systems at IISc Bangalore. He has completed his B.Tech in Electronics & Communication Engineering from National Institute of Technology Durgapur in 2015. He then worked for 2 years at HPCL as an Officer. He has been awarded Texas Instruments fellowship at IISc. He is currently working on solving IC and system level imperfections using Machine Learning jointly mentored by Prof. C.S.Thakur, Assistant Professor, DESE, IISc & Preetam Tadeparthy, TI, Bangalore. His research interest includes Machine Learning Algorithms, Analog and Digital VLSI Design, Mixed Signal Designs. He loves playing Table Tennis & is always up for a TT match

Saurabh Gupta is currently pursuing M.tech. at IISc bangalore in Electronic Systems Engineering. He has completed his Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow in 2014. Prior to joining M.tech. at IISc he has worked in Bharat Electronics Ltd. Bangalore as design engineer for 2 years and 8 months. His research interest include mixed mode VLSI circuit design, hardware and software design for communication networks. He is currently working on development of low cost portable Ultrasound imaging system designed specifically to address health care issues in rural India and developing countries

Satrajit Chakraborty is currently pursuing M.Tech. at IISc., Bangalore in Electronic Systems Engineering. He has completed his B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli in 2015. He has worked for two years as System Design Engineer in Sandisk, Bangalore. His research interests include Development of algorithms and hardware implementation of Neural Networks and NAND Flash. He is currently working under Dr. Chetan Singh Thakur on Analog implementation of Recurrent Neural Networks for pattern recognition

Alin Thomas Tharakan is currently pursuing his Masters in the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, IISc Bangalore. He completed his Bachelors in Electronics and Communication Engineering from NIT-Calicut in 2015. Before joining the Masters programme at IISc, he worked as Design Engineer for 2 years in Analog Devices, Bangalore. He is currently working on the project titled ‘Computer vision Tasks using Neuromorphic camera and its FPGA implementation’. His areas of interest include signal processing and mixed signal design. In his spare time he likes to play badminton and poker and well, sometimes read fiction

Raja Sharma is currently pursuing Masters of Technology in Microelectronic Systems at IISc Bangalore. He has completed his B.Tech in Avionics from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology in 2011. He is being working since then with ISRO Satellite Center, Bangalore as a Scientist. His work at ISRO involves developing the required software and Hardware for reception and analysis of spacecraft data. He has joined IISC as sponsored candidate from ISRO. He is currently working on Design and Implementation of Real Time Image Segmentation using a Spiking Neuromorphic Processor mentored by Prof. C.S.Thakur, Assistant Professor, DESE. His research interests include Analog and Digital VLSI Design, Mixed Signal Designs. He loves playing cricket and Badminton and has represented his organization (ISRO) in both these games

K.Bharath is currently started pursuing Masters of Science in Physics at IISc Bangalore. He graduated in 2018 from IISc Banglore with Bachelor of Science (Research) in Physics. As a part of Bachelor thesis , he developed a system to analyze Human Activity Recognition using sensors from smartphone. His research interests include various applications in Machine Learning. He loves playing sports. He has represented Indian Institute of Science in Hockey, Badminton, Cricket, Football in various tournments throughout India and has won many accolades.

Visiting Researchers

Dr. S.C.G. Kiruba Daniel is a visiting researcher of Neuronics Lab. He has completed his Ph.D in Nanotechnology from Anna University in the year 2015 and completed his Post-Doc from Instrumentation and Applied Physics Department, IISc in the year 2016. He is currently CTO and Co-Founder of a nanotechnology based start-up JK Nanosolutions situated at Bengaluru. He has been trained by Academia Industry Training (AIT) Camp in EPFL, Switzerland sponsored by Switzerland and Indian Government. He got Gandhian Young technology Innovator Award with his team for his work on melamine sensing from milk in 2017. He led his start-up JK Nanosolutions to win National Level Dev Tech award (2016) from DFID, UK and DST India, Elevate 100 Award (2017) with a grant of 25 Lakhs INR and Tata Social Enterprise Challenge Award (2018). He has around 20 publications and 8 patents contributing to 430 citations (Google Scholar) and h-index of 10. His research interests are in the development of low power and low cost nanotechnology based sensing devices

Research assistants

Yeshwanth Ravi Theja has received his Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2016. He is currently working under Dr. Chetan Singh Thakur in the area of compressive sensing. As a Research Intern at Loughborough University, he developed a system to analyze Ballet dancing using motion detecting sensors attached to dancers. He also has industrial experience of one year as a Software Engineer. His research interests are Embedded Systems and Machine Learning. Yeshwanth aims to develop affordable health grade systems and wearable gadgets to help remote diagnosis in the future. He also pursues photography as a hobby.

Soumyajit Ray is a project assistant in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc. He received his B.Tech in Instrumentation Engineering from IIT Kharagpur in 2004. After completing his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad in 2007, he worked in a number of multinational companies in technology leadership roles. He recently graduated from Washington University as a Masters student in Biomedical Engineering. He is experienced in developing peripheral nerve interfaces to reanimate paralyzed limbs using signals from a brain-computer interface (BCI). His current area of research is EEG-BCI based communication device for patients with extremely limited ability to communicate due to stroke, ALS or other neurological disorders.

Arjun Verma is a research assistant in the NeuRonICS lab at IISc, Bengaluru. He graduated in 2017 from IIIT-Delhi majored in Computer Science and Engineering. He received a summer fellowship from Indian Academy of Sciences in 2016. His areas of interest spans in various applications of Machine Learning and Statistics. He is currently working on application using ATIS based neuromorphic camera. His other interests include sports, music and gaming.

Sathyaprakash Narayanan is working under Dr. Chetan Singh Thakur on machine learning. He is a final year Undergraduate Graduate from R.M.D Engineering College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. His final year project involves Autonomous Deep Space Maneuvering for spacecrafts using neural networks. His research interest include embedded systems and machine learning. He had represented India in MIT Hackathon at Yale University,USA and has won the best innovation award, he was also selected for the Hack the North held at University of Waterloo, Canada. He also holds a patent on a system for exhale controlled communication and control device . Sathyaprakash is also a budding entrepreneur who plans to start a venture in the near future.

Priyanka is currently working under Dr.Chetan Singh Thakur in the area of neuromorphic control circuits. She is pursuing her final year Electronics and Communication Engineering from Ramaiah Institute Of Technology,Bengaluru. Previously, as a Research Intern at BOEING Research & Technology, she worked on to develop algorithms for Automated Defect Detection in Radiographic images in the field of NDE. Her final year project is based on developing Deep learning techniques for Automated Detection of CAD. Her research interests include VLSI, computer vision,deep learning and embedded systems

Aditya K received a B.E degree in Electronics and communication engineering from PES University in 2017. Obtained a summer fellowship from IIT-Hyderabad under Indian Academy of Sciences in 2016. Currently working on FPGA based hardware implementation of particle filters. Research interests include design of VLSI architectures for signal processing, satellite communication and cryptographic applications